It’s been five years since we issued Hanford Cleanup: The First 10 Years. That report documented – in chronological fashion – the obstacles, the successes, and the various twists and turns of the first ten years of cleanup at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state.

 

The 586 square mile Hanford Site is home to the world’s first plutonium production facilities. For more than 40 years at Hanford, the federal government produced plutonium for America’s nuclear weapons program. The processes generated tremendous amounts of radioactive and chemically hazardous waste. Plutonium production ended at Hanford in 1988. Since 1989, the focus has been on environmental cleanup.

 

May 2004 marked the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order, most often referred to as the Tri-Party Agreement or TPA. The TPA, signed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington State Department of Ecology, established a 30-year timetable for cleaning up Hanford’s toxic wastes. Amendments to the TPA have extended that timetable by another decade.

 

This seems an opportune time to update this report. There is no question it has been an eventful five years at Hanford. A range fire in July 2000 burned about 45 per cent of the site – threatening many contaminated facilities and burning over a few waste sites. Plans to privately finance the construction of facilities to immobilize some of Hanford’s most dangerous wastes fell apart that same summer. To DOE’s credit, they were able to recover from that debacle, and construction of those facilities is now well underway using government financing.

 

Significant progress was made in other key projects – moving pumpable liquids from the single shell tanks to double shell tanks, moving spent nuclear fuel to interim storage away from the Columbia River, and stabilizing tons of plutonium. In addition, we’ve seen the cocooning of several nuclear reactors, the dismantling of

plutonium-contaminated facilities, and movement of huge amounts of contaminated soils away from the Columbia River shoreline.

 

This progress occurred despite substantial conflict. DOE and its regulators were often at odds. The state of Oregon, the Yakama Nation, and several citizen groups initiated or joined litigation against DOE. Security issues at Hanford received considerably more focus following the terrorist attacks in September 2001. For a time, access to the site and site information became difficult, complicating the work and oversight.

 

Recently, occupational safety issues and concerns received great attention, especially in regard to possible hazards to workers in Hanford’s tank farms. We saw the creation of the Hanford Reach National Monument during this five year period. And, the Hanford Advisory

Board celebrated its first ten years.

Five years ago, we asked how we would judge the second decade of what we referred to as “this incredibly expensive, extraordinarily important and formidable task called Hanford cleanup.” TPA schedules had called for the following by 2009:

 

Most of these tasks have already been accomplished. The start of construction of the waste treatment facilities was delayed but is now well underway (although the schedule has slipped slightly and now calls for the beginning of operations by 2011). Concerns about explosive gases or flammable materials within the tanks are resolved. And, as already mentioned, the pumpable liquids are out of the single shell tanks, nearly all of the spent nuclear fuel is out

of the K-Basins (although the sludge removal fell far behind schedule), and the plutonium at the Plutonium Finishing Plant has been stabilized for long-term storage.

The past five years have been contentious ones. At least four separate lawsuits were filed related to Hanford cleanup. And, on several occasions, the Washington Department of Ecology has exercised its regulatory authority.

 

The issues of dispute include plans by DOE to bring significant amounts of waste to Hanford for disposal, treatment and storage; delays in pumping liquids from the single shell tanks; authority over reclassification of highlevel waste; and injury to natural resources. Of these issues, only the liquid removal from the single shell tanks has been resolved. The remainder are still active topics of dispute.

 

One long-standing issue – whether to restart the Fast Flux Test Facility – finally seems to have been resolved. DOE has begun deactivating the reactor, making it doubtful the reactor will ever be restarted.

Since Hanford cleanup began, much of the focus has been on resolving immediate threats: concerns about tanks that might catch fire or explode; concerns about spent nuclear

fuel stored in leaking, earthquake-vulnerable basins; and concerns about tons of unstable plutonium. As mentioned, we’ve seen great progress on all of these issues.

 

After 15 years of cleanup, we have reached a pivotal place in Hanford cleanup. Most of the immediate risks have been successfully resolved. Now the focus is squarely on the quality of the remaining cleanup. And there is considerable debate about that issue.

 

There are still plenty of long-term risks. Extensive groundwater contamination remains and huge amounts of waste are still moving in Hanford’s sub-surface to the groundwater, including high-level radioactive waste leaked from the tanks. Highly radioactive materials remain in unlined burial grounds. And, until we can put those vitrification facilities to use, 53 million gallons of high-level waste remains in 177 underground storage tanks.

 

In recent years, DOE Headquarters has stressed a quicker, less expensive cleanup. This is a key part of their accelerated cleanup program and their more recent riskbased end states initiative. Both mean leaving more waste in place. Both will require institutional controls and other restrictions to keep people away so as not to be harmed by the waste left behind.

 

DOE also proposed changes in the tank waste treatment program consistent with the push by DOE Headquarters to reduce the cost and time of cleanup. The Tri-Party Agreement requires that the tank waste all be vitrified. In the fall of 2001, Office of River Protection Manager Harry Boston said DOE was exploring alternatives to vitrifying all of Hanford’s tank waste in hopes of saving tens of billions of dollars and completing the cleanup decades ahead of schedule. Three technologies were examined and DOE is now resting its hopes on another form of vitrification to treat the majority of Hanford’s tank waste.

 

If there is one lesson in reviewing the first 15 years of Hanford cleanup – and this one lesson is repeatedly evident – it’s that there is no quick fix for the long-term risks at Hanford. DOE must simply continue with the methodical approach as outlined by Tri-Party Agreement milestones to lessen and ultimately eliminate these hazards.

 

The lessons from Hanford’s past are among the reasons we believe it is important to document the Hanford cleanup. We can see that the cleanup challenges at Hanford are continually underestimated in terms of their difficulty, their complexity, and their cost.

 

In addition, by documenting the commitments, the activities, the progress and failures, over the long period of time that cleanup will take, we can help to ensure that the original goals for cleanup are fulfilled. Otherwise, it can be all too easy to lose track of previous commitments and to gradually move in other directions.

 

In writing this report we have once again drawn heavily from coverage by the news media – the Tri-City Herald in particular, but also from the Oregonian, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Associated Press and other media sources.

 

As we have now passed the 15th anniversary of the TPA, some of the same concerns and questions we have dealt with before still remain. Funding has and likely will always be a major issue. Those of us concerned about Hanford cleanup have been somewhat nervous about the impact of DOE’s plans to accelerate closure at several sites around the nation, such as Rocky Flats in Colorado and Fernald in Ohio. Getting Congress to appropriate sufficient funding for DOE’s environmental cleanup program has been successful because there has been support from all the states impacted by DOE facilities. We worry about what happens to that support when sites are closed in Colorado, Ohio and other states. Will the Congressional delegations from those states still fight for cleanup funds in other states? This is not a new question. It is one that has been asked for several years. But, it is one we may begin to see the answer to within the next few years.

 

Federal funding for Hanford cleanup is expected to peak with the fiscal year 2006 budget. However, unlike at Rocky Flats and Fernald, cleanup at Hanford will continue well beyond 2006. Yes, plutonium stabilization is complete, and yes, the spent fuel project will soon be complete, and those were very expensive projects. But, there are other needs at Hanford which require funding. Hanford still has no facilities to treat or package remote-handled transuranic waste. Until those facilities are in place, no work will be done to retrieve waste from burial grounds such as 618-10 and 618-11 – which pose a long-term threat to the Columbia River. The groundwater protection program has been under-funded for years. Lack of funding has also resulted in abandoning plans to move Hanford’s strontium and cesium capsules to dry storage. And of course, construction of the tank waste treatment facilities will require a continued large investment of funds for the next 5-7 years.

 

The public’s insistence that cleanup continue has – without question – had a huge impact at Hanford. The successes at Hanford are a shared accomplishment by all who have worked to see cleanup move forward. But the job is far from over and your continued involvement is absolutely necessary. As you review Hanford Cleanup:The First 15 Years , rejoice in the accomplishments, shake your head at the missteps, and steel yourself for the hard work yet to be done.

Some Hanford facilities — such as N Reactor above — are located very close to the Columbia River. The zig-zag trench at the bottom of the photo was a liquid waste disposal trench. Another trench is just out of view, farther to the left. The soil and groundwater between the trench and the river is heavily contaminated.

The photo above shows the hazardous environment that many workers face in trying to clean up Hanford.